When Retirees Misjudge Their Desire for Leisure

MARC FREEDMAN: In an era when so many Americans labor in extreme jobs during their middle years, it’s no surprise that many are desperate for a break when approaching traditional retirement age. After years of being overworked and overwhelmed, juggling work and family, the appeal of kicking back, tuning out, and focusing on much-overdue R&R, is palpable. But these individuals need to ask—especially when considering a move–whether a balloon payment of leisure lasting decades in duration is really what they are bargaining for. Or do they simply need a hiatus, the chance to rest up before re-engaging. If it’s the latter, moving to a traditional age-segregated retirement playground can be disastrous.

For many, the smarter move will be to find a community that provides opportunities for continued contribution and engagement, contact across the generations, and ongoing community and purpose. There is now an accumulation of evidence suggesting that the keys to extended physical and mental well-being in the second half of life are those Freud once identified as love and work–strong social ties and a reason to get up in the morning.
Intergenerational engagement should be added to that essential list. I think a great mistake of the last 50 years was to glorify age segregation in America, especially in retirement living. In my view, it’s unnatural and unhealthy. Human beings are designed to pass on from generation to generation, and the more aware we become of our own mortality, the stronger the impulse is to connect with young people and to invest in their well-being.

The psychologist Erik Erikson called this drive generativity, and said it was the hallmark of successful development in the middle years and beyond, one encapsulated in the notion, “I am what survives of me.” For Erikson, the opposite of generativity, was stagnation.

I think he was right. I think that cutting so many older people off from natural contact with younger ones for so many years has deprived this country of its generative heartland, and with it a great source of guidance and mentoring for young people. And I believe, more broadly, that it has even contributed to undermining a central feature of the American dream—the core belief that the next generation should be better off than the last, and that we must strive to leave the world better than we found it. In the absence of cross generational contact, it’s been much easier to forget that core tenet, and much harder to practice it.

It’s time to return to those aspirations, as human beings and as a nation. And to think about our housing decisions in later life through a more generative lens.

Marc Freedman is CEO and founder of Encore.org, a nonprofit organization working to promote encore careers—second acts for the greater good.